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Chief Reputation Officer: Whose Job Is It, Anyway?

This article is more than 10 years old.

In the 20th century, PR and marketing were separate but unequal career paths, and CMO was the highest-ranking and most-respected title to which one in those jobs could aspire. The standard career paths in these areas were relatively linear: As a lead communicator, you went to j-school, did a turn in journalism or an agency and then apprenticed under a "gray hair" boss until he retired. This is compared with the typical path of a chief marketing officer, who got his or her M.B.A. in marketing, hired agencies that made him or her look good, learned how to manage big budgets and award-winning creative and then got in the running for the corner office.

Today that is changing because of the increasing importance of reputation management. In 2007, the Arthur Page Society noted the shift in focus as "the digital network revolution, global integration and stakeholder empowerment call into question many basic assumptions of the 20th-century corporate model." One of these challenged assumptions is marketing’s dominance over the communications function as it relates to the burgeoning field of reputation management.

Michael Bush made this point earlier this year in an Advertising Age article entitled "How PR Chiefs Have Shifted Toward Center of Marketing Departments" in which he pointed to examples--IBM, American Airlines, BMC Software and Intuit--where chief communicators also own the marketing or advertising budget responsibility:

"When a crisis hits, it's the in-house communications and PR specialists that take the lead in formulating a communications strategy. But with the rise of social media and the need for ultra-quick turnaround in creating and launching campaigns, could the day soon come when internal PR departments are steering the marketing ship full time?"

American Airlines VP of Corporate Communications & Advertising Roger Frizzell told AdAge the integration of marketing and communications, whether forced or natural, is happening for every marketer and it is due mainly to the advent and acceptance of social media and heightened social consciousness of Americans on environmental, governance and diversity issues. "When you're talking corporate reputation now you’re talking marketing," Frizzell said. "As advertising budgets shrink and the economy gets tighter, you have to rethink your ad spend and PR can maximize that ad spend. In some cases it should compliment creative work and replace it in others."

Senior executives who are responsible for reputation inside companies today are searching for ways to engage with multiple stakeholders in authentic and credible two-way communications, all the while needing to continuously build the business case/ROI for the things they do. CMOs undoubtedly bring strategic muscle to this game, built on a product- and service-branding model, but they typically did not grow up in the resource-constrained, highly complex world of corporate communications.

As the returns on traditional product advertising decline, CMOs are left looking to new tools (online, social media, etc.) for their salvation, but in today’s environment, it's about much more than tools. People care about the companies behind the products and services that they purchase.

The opportunity here is to leverage the company as a strategic asset to drive sales and market share. Reputation measures are one good way to keep score, but the discipline of rigorously analyzing what matters about your company to your customers opens up new competitive arenas. Today’s "chief reputation officer" (whether CMO or CCO or a hybrid) has the opportunity to drive competitive advantage by connecting the corporation to its stakeholders in relevant ways that simply didn’t exist a decade ago.

At first blush, the requisite skills that reputation managers and stewards need to thrive in this brave new world appear to come in five diverse skill sets:

--Cognitive Skills (knowledge about business and communication functions, plus stakeholder-specific know-how)

--Analytical Skills (causal thinking and drawing inferences, plus systems thinking and contextual analysis)

--Process Skills (change management, plus facilitation and coordination execution)

--Communication Skills (writing, speaking, presenting, plus comparative dynamics of old and new media)

--Organizational Skills (persuading others and mobilizing support, plus organizing and leading high-performance teams, not just FTEs)

From a career development standpoint, the emergence of corporate reputation has thrown a monkey wrench into the best-laid plans for CMOs to maintain their primacy. Today it’s about balancing the seven dimensions that make up corporate reputation (product/service, innovation, governance, workplace, citizenship, performance and leadership), namely going beyond product and service promises that are still rooted in 20th-century brand-building assumptions. The evolution of the role of chief reputation officer is still in its infancy, but one thing is clear: It’s not about just getting involved in social media, it’s about giving the company a voice in the formation of its reputation.

Every company has a reputation, regardless of whether or not it has a strategy behind it. Thus, today’s reputation stewards must give voice to their companies. If they do not, their reputations will be driven only by accident (as a result of company actions that don't benefit from expert CRO guidance--see recent financial crisis for numerous examples) and by conversations among people who might not be their best friends. That is a recipe for disaster, no matter who is keeping score.

Anthony Johndrow is U.S. managing director of the Reputation Institute in New York.